Professor
Music Theory
School of Music
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, LA 70803-2504
P: 225.578.3556
F: 225.578.2562
E: jperry@lsu.edu

Perry was born in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts, and holds degrees from Williams College (B.A. 1982), the California Institute of the Arts (M.F.A. 1984), and Princeton University (Ph.D. 1990). He has taught at LSU since August 1994, and was formerly a member of the music faculty of Duke University (1990-92) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1993-94). He has been a Fellow of the Mannes Institute for Advanced Studies in Music Theory twice (2004, 2006).

His work has been published in College Music Symposium, Perspectives of New Music, the Indiana Theory Review, the Journal of Musicology, Nineteenth Century Music, Music Theory Online, Music Theory Spectrum, and elsewhere. Recent publications include "Cage's Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano: Performance, Hearing and Analysis" (Music Theory Spectrum vol 27 no.1 (Spring 2005). An essay on “Mel Powell and the String Quartet” appears in Intimate Voices: Aspects of Construction and Character in the Twentieth-Century String Quartet, (University of Rochester Press, 2008), edited by Evan Jones. In July 2008 he presented "Inner or Outer Demons? On Performing Schubert’s Aus Goethe’s Faust D. 126” at the conference Performing Romantic Music: Theory and Practice hosted by St. Chad’s College and the Center for Nineteenth-Century Music, Durham University, Durham, UK, and in March 2009 he presented “America, the City of God, and Other Imaginary Places: Ives, Roots, and Rock” at an interdisciplinary colloquium series at LSU.

Perry is a past President of the South Central Society for Music Theory (SCSMT) and has served as coordinator of music theory at LSU, as director of the LSU Festival of Contemporary Music, and as chair of the LSU Faculty Senate Courses and Curriculum Committee. Three times a recipient of awards from the Alpha Lambda Delta Freshman Honors Society for superior instruction of freshman students, he has received three summer research stipends and several research travel grants from the LSU Office of Research and Graduate Studies. In 2006-9 he served as Reviews Editor of Music Theory Online, a peer-reviewed journal of the Society for Music Theory.